BARTLET [to Obama]: GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

But let’s put it this way. I have an ideal seat to the fine fine show at my own workplace tomorrow night, where we are presenting a musical I have loved as long as hard as I’ve loved Hair, and I just semi-accidentally put myself in the Public’s “virtual line” for Hair seats tomorrow night.

Also it has taken me like half an hour to type this because I can’t organize my thoughts yet.

Okay. I’m shutting up now. Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it.

Oh wait, I am addressing myself.

See, that’s the kind of strange thing that happens when you decide it’s a good idea to spend three days in Las Vegas and then fly back on the red-eye at the equivalent of 2 AM Eastern time and then go to work that same day.  Attributes that make this state of being even more interesting: residual effects of 1.5 Tylenol PM ingested at 2 AM Eastern time; unwashed hair; unshakable symptoms of last week’s stomach bug every few hours.  In other words, I am in a very awake, fresh, comfortable state right now, the kind of state that is conducive to mouth-breathing, gut-staring reflections.

Glubble, sayeth my lower intestine.

Anyway.  The Hunk of Man, some other friends and I went to Las Vegas this weekend, where we slept in a dilapidated pyramid that featured leaky ceilings and uncomfortable delusions of grandeur.  We were within spitting distance of cartoon castle, a comically misplaced “beach” resort, and a teeny tiny replica of our own fair city.  There were families from around the world in town for the holiday weekend, shuttling their children to shows and arcades and the M&M’s and Krispy Kreme joints while dodging the giant billboards for half-naked vampire women and scary washboard abs of the Australian “Thunder” boys.  Drinks were consumed out of 2-feet tall plastic beakers.  Money was lost and won over green felt tables and at the push of a button.  There were lots and lots of sound effects.

And in the end, my original summary of Vegas, made as a bored 17-year-old relegated to standing behind a certain line in the carpet, more than an arm’s length from anything on which one can bet as my parents and brother (then 19 and equipped with this guy’s expired passport and a baseball hat) played and played, still holds true: Las Vegas = Hell + Disney World, nothing more, nothing less.  There are castles, rides and a souvenir shop at every corner.  When you’re done smiling, you can feed one of many addictions: sex, gambling, drinking, famewhoring.  You can do it up right–stay somewhere luxurious, see the best shows (clothed or otherwise), come out ahead cash-wise–but it’s still Vegas.  It’s still seedy and oily and pointlessly located in the middle of nowhere, an isolating anti-oasis of “fun and games” that only thinly veil its status as a conduit of Western culture’s egregiously mislaid priorities.  Mass production, mass consumption, mass market, mass everything–nothing accomplished in Vegas is done so on a scale less than MASS, and the result when you’re there is a feeling of dehumanization in an impersonal smoke-and-silicone city.  The lasting effect is one of outdated, unfashionable opulence, a gratuitousness that seems downright insulting given the water, energy, hunger, you-name-it crises going on around the world and in our own country.

I’ll be the first to admit that my living practices are anything but green, practical, frugal, thoughtful, mindful, respectful, purposeful, or executed on a regular basis with any thoughts of those in need of water, energy, food, you-name-it around the world and in our own country.  I’ll also be the first to admit that yeah, I had fun in Vegas, but that had more to do with being with friends and being silly and seeing Love than avoiding the realities of my daily non-Vegas life.  And I don’t disagree that everybody needs an outlet, an escape, to keep from going insane.  I just don’t find Las Vegas a very productive one, and its scale and ongoing growth trajectory signal to me (with no scientific backup or anything, of course) an abundance of misdirected human energy, not a dearth of morality or anything.  Sin will be sin whether it stays in Vegas or not–but why so many billions of dollars go into making that quantity of shiny sin possible for millions of visitors each year is somewhat beyond me.

For goodness sake, you have to fly over the Grand Canyon to get there.  That’s at least more breathtaking than Carrot Top and Louie Anderson, right?

 ~~~

Anyway, we all survived (as far as I know, since Brian is still en route to NYC), as I’d imagine a huge percentage of Vegas visitors do.  JC and I had a mushy airport farewell as he headed off to do this for a few months.  My overgifting tendencies flourished in the desert heat, and I was damn near unstoppable, but he dealt with it well, because he is pretty super.  And, for blogging purposes, let’s get excited: I’m going to Los Angeles next month to visit him.  I will set foot on California soil for the first time ever.  Something tells me I might have a few things to say about it.  You know, just one or two.

- Tonight on our way to the Western Wall, we witnessed the most intense catfight I have ever seen, and I mean catfight as in fight among cats, not two Orthodox women pulling off each other’s wigs over the price of a falafel sandwich. It was the loudest, mangiest thing I have ever seen, two black-and-white cats against an orange tabby, and it was a sight to behold. Ah, the Old City! Land of the Angry Felines! How do you say that in Hebrew?

- When we got to the Western Wall, just after I took a photo of it, I realized my cell phone was ringing. It costs me $2.49/min to talk AND $2.49/min even if you just leave me a rambly voicemail I don’t listen to (so don’t call me), but I can get texts for free. Except I haven’t gotten any texts since I’ve been here, despite the fact that JC had emailed to say he had texted and the fact that Twitter texts me all the damn time. This has caused some disappointment. Anyway, we’re approaching the wall and my phone goes crazy. I take it out, and lo: 48 hours worth of texts, delivered in one foul swoop. It felt good to connect to the outside world.

- Also it’s not weird to be texting at the wall. There are Orthodox men like, smoking and texting all over the place. Not, obviously, AT the wall, but, you know, in the plaza in front of it. Activities are pretty focused AT the wall. The women are neither smoking nor texting, as they need both hands to manage all of the babies.

-  Offensively bad puns of the day: “Theodore Hertzl’s daughter and grandson took their own lives. Or, committed Jewicide.” “Yad Vashem has a Hall of Remembrance? Our hotel has a Hall of Refrigeration.”

- This will easily be the longest I have gone without bacon in many, many years.

- Um, everyone here is Jewish.* Dad said, “doesn’t it feel strange to feel so like, you’re like everyone else and you’re at HOME?” At which point I reminded him of how Jewish my childhood was (not).  Being here is wonderful, but it isn’t a society I am at all comfortable in just yet.

- Black hats eating sushi. Not something you see a lot of stateside.

- Jews at the hotel pool = hairy. Very hairy.

- Israeli pistachios are huge.

- Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum/Memorial, is a very different place than the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It’s also an absolutely beautiful building. Come see it.

- All of the young people are gorgeous. All of the old people look like people my parents introduce me to at synagogue/shiva/etc. Uncanny.

Anyway, that’s that for now. I need a pre-dinner nap. Also, for those of you who are interested, I have been washing my hair like a big girl for weeks now! Hooray.

*I know, not everyone. Just most. And almost all the ones I’ve seen.

Here’s my Pressing Issue:

ONCE upon a time, I had long hair that I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t know how to use product in my curly hair, I didn’t know not to to brush it, etc. etc. Mom, naturally, based her treatment of my hair on what she knew about her own hair, so I had a blow-dried roll of bangs that frizzed at the slightest sign of moisture (which, given my area of origin, was daily) and a giant puff of hair behind it, which usually wound up being strapped into a low, unfortunate ponytail. I may have blogged about this in the past.

And then! I had it all chopped off, age 16. I learned the ways of product. I shared the ways of product (you are welcome, Davis). I was a product pro. I still am a product pro! With the exception of a few months during my sophomore year of college and the past year, I have spent the last nine years with my hair floating freely between my ears and my shoulders. I could wash it in a second. Some days it looked crazy, some days it didn’t. It is a decidedly unsexy look for me, but Jesus H. Arrojo is it easy.

And THEN! I started letting it grow. This was… sometime over a year ago. And now, totally uninterested parties, it is LAWNG. Real, real LAWNG. Lawnger than it has ever been–down to here, down to there, down to where it stops by itself, as it were. And because it is still curly (duh), I still don’t brush it and just throw some product in after a shower and let it hang out for like three or four days. The problem with this is the shower part–it takes me FOREVER to shower because I spend all the time that you normal-haired people spend brushing/styling your hair in a three-day period… in the shower, brushing (with my fingers) out 3-4 days worth of knots, loose hairs, and city detritus.

What of it? you ask? Well, I am not, how you say, so good at getting out of bed in the mornings. And I am not, so to speak, really that interested in, standing in the shower WORKING on my hair (because it is work, it is like more than a foot of work in some places), especially when I have just gotten out of bed. So I get mornings like this morning, when I woke up and lint-rolled my dining chairs instead of washing my hair. OR I can shower at night and have great-looking hair for like, an hour before I sleep on it and wake up looking like a homeless person. One day of crazy hair… and then three days in a ponytail.

I am at a breaking point. Should I grow up and learn how to shower on a regular basis and take the time to take care of my hair? Or should I just fuck it and chop it all off? I’m not what you would call a petite person, or what you would call a person with notable facial bone structure.  Accordingly, chopping off The Great Balancer would probably make my face look flat and mushy and the rest of me look… eh, larger. But I demand to not be tortured by my hair and suffer the fate of the women who came before me! And no, I will not grow dreadlocks.

I need help, people. What do you think?

* bad reasons include: television; boyfriend; more television; board games. These are not bad things, just bad reasons for not blogging–plenty of people who watch too much TV, play too many board games and have excellent significant others blog extensively and well.

Ms. Defonseca’s book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was published in the 1990s and, according to the Times, translated into 18 languages and adapted into a film in France called “Surviving with Wolves” (her “Memoire” included chronicles her living with and being raised by wolves for a time, not to mention killing a Nazi soldier and, it would seem, walking across Europe). Ms. Seltzer’s book, Love and Consequences, which she published under the name Margaret P. Jones, was very well-received, and she was about to start her Penguin book tour when her sister saw her photo in the Times and called her publisher to say that the story she’d sold as a memoir, “about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods,” according to the Times, was completely untrue. She went to a private school and was raised by her white biological parents.

Both women apologized. Both women are ashamed and, interestingly, somewhat confused. Ms. Defonseca’s statement to the AP reads: “The story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving. I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost.” Ms. Seltzer gave a tearful interview to the Times and explained that she felt she was speaking for an unheard population in her book.

Isn’t it a little strange? Isn’t it a little terrible? Two highly-skilled writers chose to do something incredibly stupid that ruined their careers. When James Frey did this a few years back, I felt pretty strongly that it didn’t matter. His fabrications made for a really good read, so who cares if it’s true or not, because you can’t believe everything you read anyway, right? At the time I at least noted that as someone with no experience with drug addiction or rehabilitation, I probably wasn’t the person to approach about how Frey’s fictionalization of his experience made me feel. I blamed Frey’s lies on his ego, and, well, there isn’t much anybody can do about a man’s ego. But I’ve got a theory, as a woman and a writer, on these two women, Ms. Defanseco and Ms. Seltzer, that has more to do with confidence than ego.

When it comes to writing fiction, it’s cozy to write what you know, and it’s tempting to write what you think you know or what to know. If you think you know a tough subject, it’s tempting to tackle it without the research you need or without taking a step back and putting your ducks in a row. Both women had peripheral experiences with the harsh environs they threw their fictional selves into, which gave them that taste of the unthinkable lives they weren’t going to live. They heard voices and saw scenes that stuck in their heads. They thought they had to get close enough to create something empathic, something that meant being there, meant something more than just a story, meant a memior.

The empathy these authors felt for the characters, narrators or groups they created or claimed to have known made them write their fictions. But fiction that rests on dramatic or painful issues (like gang violence or the Holocaust) has to be more that just empathetic–it has to be brilliant. Cynthia Ozick’s Holocaust treatments come to mind, as, in a different way, does Jeffrey Eugenides’ approach to teenage suicide. I think Defonseca and Seltzer were crippled by the weight of the stories they wanted to tell. I think they chose to stand inside their stories as a means to prop up and legitimize them. Sadly, the praise their books have received indicate that they are fine writers who likely could have turned out fiction as fiction and succeeded.

If Ms. Seltzer wanted to speak for girls in gangland, she could have gone deeper than the South Central Starbucks where she wrote her book. She could have told one of their real stories or attributed her fictional compilation to the women she based it on. She could have told their stories without exploiting them or driving her career into the ground. Ms. Defonseca did a disservice to writers and nonwriters who did survive seemingly impossible, inhumane conditions during the Holocaust by writing a fantasy and not labelling it accordingly.

*Next day update! I’m a few days late on this, but Slate has this great article about Ms. Defonseca’s book.

*THE BEST next day update: Penguin’s site has taken it down, but Gawker has these excerpts from an interview with Ms. Seltzer about her experiences in the ‘hood. Wow.

~~~

And now, dear readers, it’s your turn: if you got to write an earth-shattering memoir that wasn’t actually constructed of your memories (or any actual events, for that matter), what would you write? I, for one, used to have this very vivid fantasy where [even] crazy[er] racist people took over my prep school and called an assembly to tell us how all the non-Christian, non-white kids were getting kicked out, and I stood up and proclaimed my FREEDOOOOOOOM! This was, of course, long before I saw Braveheart, so it didn’t sound quite like that, but you get the idea. I think this mostly stemmed from my parents telling me that if Pat Buchanan ever won an election, we would be in deep shit. But that’s a different story. Anyway, what horrible trials would you overcome in your “memoir?”

It’s also been announced that Jonathan “The Sprinkler Hunk” Groff, he of sexually ambigious, Tony-nominated Spring Awakening fame, will star as Claude, just as he did at Joe’s Pub.

Given all of the above, you will easily understand the following messages I received when this link appeared in my Google Talk status message.

Allison: this is going to be a frickin’ awesome summer
i hope groff gets naked
that would make my day

Brian: groff is leaving spring awakening?
me: i guess
by july
WHO CARES, HAIR!!!
Brian: hahaha

Nicole: oh oh oh I wanna go too!me: eeeeee!
Nicole: so adorable

Erica: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
JAW JUST DROPPED
me: I KNOW!
CAN’T WAIT!!
Erica: we need to like
camp out

Kathleen: hahahaha
wow. you might explode
me: I MIGHT EXPLODE

and then I sent an email to my parents with the subject line, “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.” For real.

(Tribune photo by Charles Cherney)

I miss you, Chicagoans, but I haven’t worn my snow boots yet in NYC (which, granted, is a total fluke), my red down coat stays mainly in the closet, and I rarely accessorize beyond a light scarf.